Is it street art or is it a magazine cover? This time, it's both. To create our January/February cover, Oakland artist Eddie Colla used water-based acrylic paints and three large sheets of paper, which he affixed to a worn brick industrial building. Normally, he posts his artwork in less than five minutes; for our photo shoot, he was able to take his time. Colla made only one copy of the image, so there was no room for error.

Art director Tracy Cox explains why he thought Colla's work was a fit for the cover story, "Kick Coal, Save Jobs, Right Now": "This is a story primarily about labor. In my mind, public art and the labor movement have always been intertwined—early-20th-century Soviet worker posters, Mexican muralists like Diego Rivera, WPA public arts projects, and the World War II posters elevating American workers. Street art is the public art of today, so it was a natural progression to use it to illustrate the story." Watch the video above to find out how the cover was made and to see more of Colla's work. —Della Watson

"A proud worker who stands poised to forsake 19th-century technology
for a bold 21st-century future, producing energy that won't make his
family sick" is how editor in chief Bob Sipchen sees this month's
cover. Read more in Spout.